News and Press Releases of DIW Berlin

Marten Ritterrath has successfully defended his dissertation

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:27:00 +0200

Marten Ritterrath, who is an associate Ph.D. student in the Crime, Labor, and Inequality Department has successfully defended his dissertation at the Universität zu Köln on July 20th. The dissertation, entitled "How Personal Experiences and Social Concerns Shape Green Innovation and Climate Policy" ...

Historical Changes in Control Beliefs

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:52:00 +0200

A recent SOEP study of more than 42,000 respondents by a research team led by Theresa M. Entringer shows that younger birth cohorts in Germany are more likely to believe that they can influence their lives and maintain this sense of control into older age. While differences between genders and ...

COVID-19 Has Little Influence on Risk Preferences

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:52:00 +0200

A new analysis by Daniel Graeber, Ulrich Schmidt, Carsten Schröder, and Johannes Seebauer, based on SOEP data and regional variation in infection rates, shows that individual risk preferences remain largely stable despite rising financial worries and anxiety. The findings suggest that a pandemic ...

Workshop Call: Firms, Workers, and Households in Times of Crisis and Digital Transformation

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:02:00 +0200

As part of the SOEP-LEE2 project, AKempor (Working Group on Empirical Personnel and Organizational Research) will host a workshop at DIW Berlin on 26–27 November focusing on research related to resilience, crisis response, digital transformation, and cybersecurity.

The workshop emphasizes empirical research using survey and linked data on firms, employees, and households. New data resources from the SOEP research infrastructure will also be presented.

Submissions from economics, sociology, business administration, political science, and related disciplines are welcome until 1 September 2026.

VISIT THE WORKSHOP PAGE

Workshop Call: Firms, Workers, and Households in Times of Crisis and Digital Transformation

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:02:00 +0200

Share Your Ideas: SOEP Feature Requests – New Thread on Forum4Mica

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:20:00 +0200

Forum4Mica is a platform where data users can ask questions about SOEP data and its generation and receive timely answers from relevant experts. Do you have ideas on how the SOEP can be improved? Forum4MICA is now also available for your feedback, suggestions, or ideas for improvement. The ...

Share Your Ideas: SOEP Feature Requests – New Thread on Forum4Mica

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:20:00 +0200

Migration History Variable (mighist) Now Available

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:43:00 +0200

SOEP data users can now request the mighist (“migration history”) variable and its accompanying information variable mighist_info for SOEP-Core v41 by contacting soepmail@diw.de. Both variables will be included in the upcoming SOEP-Core v42 release. By introducing mighist, SOEP adopts the ...

Migration History Variable (mighist) Now Available

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:32:00 +0200

SOEP data users can now request access to the variable mighist (“migration history”) and its accompanying information variable mighist_info, based on SOEP-Core v41 data. To obtain the variables, please contact soepmail@diw.de.

The variables will be included as a standard component of the upcoming SOEP-Core v42 release and will no longer need to be ordered separately.

With mighist, SOEP adopts the migration history concept used in Germany’s Microcensus, facilitating international comparability. Under this definition, a person is considered to have a migration history if either the person themselves or both parents immigrated to present-day Germany since 1950.

16th International German Socio-Economic Panel User Conference in Berlin

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:57:00 +0200

On July 8 and 9, 2026, the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) welcomed approximately 90 researchers from Germany and abroad to its user conference in Berlin. Every two years, SOEP data users from various disciplines—including the social and economic sciences—meet to present their current research and ...

Project meeting Wärme-ZIEL

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:23:00 +0200

The implementation of municipal heat planning was the focus of the semi-annual meeting of the "Wärme-ZIEL" research project in Reppenstedt near Lüneburg on 5 June 2026. Representatives from science, municipalities and the energy industry discussed current challenges of the heating transition and ...

Gökhan Ider has successfully defended his dissertation

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Gökhan Ider, Research Associate in the Macroeconomics Department, successfully defended his dissertation entitled “The Conduct and Transmission of Macroeconomic Policy. Essays in Monetary, Fiscal and Financial Stability Policy” on June 19, 2026. He was supervised by Alexander Kriwoluzky and Malte ...

Lorenz Meister successfully defended his dissertation

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:51:00 +0200

Lorenz Meister successfully defended his dissertation, “Essays on Economic Beliefs, Risk Preferences, and Political Attitudes in Contemporary Democracies,” at Freie Universität Berlin on 18 June. His supervisors were Carsten Schröder (FU Berlin, SOEP) and Panu Poutvaara (LMU Munich). We ...

Lorenz Meister has successfully defended his dissertation

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Lore

SOEP-IS Study Confirms the Knobe Effect

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:03:00 +0200

A study conducted within the SOEP Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS) by Christoph Schmidt-Petri, Daniel Labarca Pinto, and Carsten Schröder with 2,295 respondents confirms that people are much more likely to attribute intentionality to harmful side effects than to beneficial ones. The findings replicate a ...

Data as a Key to Better Crisis Preparedness

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:14:00 +0200

For more than 40 years, SOEP has been collecting information on living conditions, health, and social factors from approximately 30,000 individuals. Based on these data, Sabine Zinn develops synthetic health data that links different information sources and enable realistic scenario modeling. These ...

2025 Annual Report published: Setting the course for the future SOEP

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 20:18:00 +0200

The Socio-Economic Panel’s 42nd year marked a turning point, as the recently published annual report shows. The SOEP’s vision for its own strategic expansion was evaluated by the Leibniz Association and the German Science Council (as the “great strategic enhancement”). This broad-based initiative ...

Geolinking Service SoRa: Successful Soft Launch

Thu, 14 May 2026 18:42:00 +0200

The Geolinking Service SoRa enables spatial analysis of social science survey data and contributes to socio-spatial research. It provides pre-prepared geospatial datasets as well as methods for linking survey and spatial data. On 13 May, a successful soft launch was held as an online event with 100 ...

Geolinking Service SoRa: Successful Soft Launch

Thu, 14 May 2026 18:21:00 +0200

The Geolinking Service SoRa enables spatial analysis of social science survey data and supports socio-spatial research. Pre-defined geospatial datasets and linking methods will be offered, e.g. spatial indicators from the IOER-Monitor to analyses the living environment (including aspects of ...

Clara Schäper has successfully defended her dissertation

Wed, 13 May 2026 17:01:00 +0200

Clara Schäper, Research Associate in the Public Economics Department and Gender Economics research group and Ph.D. student at the University of Potsdam, successfully defended her dissertation entitled “The Personal is Political: Five Essays in Labor and Family Economics” on May 12, 2026. She was ...